Touch screens provide a mechanism for rapidly entering data on devices with constrained form factors. The touch screens are generally designed to operate and respond to a finger touch, a stylus tap or movement on the touch screen surface. Touching or tapping a specific point on the touch screen display will activate a virtual button, feature or function found or shown at that location on the touch screen display.
With the advent of touch screen displays on mobile telephones, for example, entering data into the mobile telephones has become easier. As such, with existing systems, users take pictures, store voice memos, read electronic mail messages and text messages, and maintain address books with the mobile telephones. To protect this information, many mobile telephones enable the display to be locked on command or after a defined timeout. To enter data with the existing systems, the user first unlocks the mobile telephone and then enters the data. However, unlocking the mobile telephone for every data input is tedious, inconvenient and slow. For example, if a user wants to capture a photograph with their locked device, the user first unlocks the device to access the photo capture application. By the time the user has unlocked the device, in many cases the action or the moment intended for capture has passed. Capturing the moment is now not possible because the user was forced to trade responsiveness for security. In setting up the device to prevent unauthorized access, the user has hampered the performance of a core feature of the device from supporting the needs of the user.